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“I encourage you, old buddy, to speak out,” Biden said at a fundraiser for Schrader in Portland, Ore.

The freshman Democrat has emerged as a fierce critic of the war in Afghanistan.

“It’s a waste of resources, a waste of America’s best and brightest,” he recently told The Oregonian newspaper. “I’m for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn’t win, the British Empire couldn’t win, the Soviet Union couldn’t win. That’s stupid. We need to be bringing these men home.”

Biden praised Schrader for being “independent.”

“You’re independent. Don’t let anybody take that out of you,” he said, according to the pool report.

Schrader was one of only 25 congressmen to vote for an amendment that "would have stripped the war funding entirely," The Hill reported.

I don't think Biden's simply praising Schrader for being "independent." Would Biden praise an anti-Obamacare Democrat for "speaking out" against the president's health care bill? No, Biden is praising Schrader for undermining a mission in Afghanistan he opposes. And Biden does this after the commander-in-chief called on his administration to be unified on Afghanistan:

I’ve just told my national security team that now is the time for all of us to come together. Doing so is not an option but an obligation. I welcome debate among my team but I won’t tolerate division.

All of us have personal interests. All of us have opinions. Our politics often fuels conflict. But we have to renew our sense of common purpose and meet our responsibilities, to one another and to our troops who are in harm’s way and to our country.